Woman's body in car trunk in Queens

By
N.J. Burkett
and Web produced by Jennifer Matarese, Eyewitness News

NEW YORK --

Police in Queens are investigating the discovery of a woman's body in the trunk of a car. She was later identified as a wife and mother of three children from Flushing.

Jae-Yun Cha was still struggling to find the strength to tell his three children that his wife, Young-Joo, was murdered.

Her body was stuffed into the trunk of her own car this weekend. Police say she had been strangled.

Jae-Yun says she had been missing since Friday morning.

"She went to work at 5:30 Thursday evening," Jae-Yun Cha said in Korean, "and she left work at 4:30 Friday morning, but she never came home."

Young-Joo worked as a baker at a food processing plant in an industrial neighborhood in Maspeth.

Co-workers said nothing seemed suspicious when she punched the time clock and left at the end of her overnight shift.

Her husband says Young-Joo's wallet was later found on the pavement near the front door, apparently, intact.

"She left with a significant amount of baked goods, there is speculation that she was meeting somebody, and I can only tell you that the investigation is going forward aggressively," New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

The motive was not immediately clear and police are checking her phone records for leads.

Her husband says Young-Joo both loaned and borrowed money from acquaintances.

He provided that information to NYPD detectives on Monday.

He was interrogated for several hours by investigators at the 108th precinct and released without charges.